The wind smelled of ash.
Not the dry smoke of campfires, but the bitter sting of burning villages.
Private Arlen Veyr crouched behind the shattered wall, gripping his spear so tightly his knuckles ached. The war had dragged on longer than any of them imagined, and the enemy seemed endless, like a tide that no wall could hold back.
Shouts echoed somewhere beyond the smoke. Steel rang against steel, sharp and frantic. Arlen forced himself to breathe slowly, the way they had taught him.
In.Hold.Out.
His unit had been scattered minutes ago. One moment they were advancing through the outer village, the next the sky itself seemed to split open with fire. The demons had poured through the northern breach like a black tide, silent and coordinated.
Too coordinated.
He risked a glance over the broken stone. A farmhouse burned in the distance, flames licking through its roof. A body lay facedown in the mud — human. He couldn't tell who.
He swallowed.
He had imagined this moment since he enlisted at seventeen. The glorious clash. The righteous charge. The chance to prove himself more than a blacksmith's son.
Instead, there was only smoke. And fear that tasted metallic in his mouth.
It wasn't supposed to feel like this.
When he was a boy, war had sounded different.
It sounded like drums in the square and polished armor catching the sun. It sounded like priests raising their hands toward the heavens, promising glory to those who fell with faith in their hearts. It sounded like his father's quiet pride the day Arlen first lifted a hammer without dropping it.
"You're strong," his father had said. "Stronger than I was at your age."
But strength at the forge was not the same as strength in a story.
He had grown up on stories.
Stories of demons with burning eyes who devoured cattle and children alike. Stories of noble captains who drove them back into the northern dark. Stories where good and evil stood cleanly apart, like iron separated from slag.
He used to sit on the workshop floor, watching sparks leap from the anvil, imagining they were fragments of some great battle far away. He would swing sticks like swords and swear that one day he would stand at the border himself.
Not because he hated demons.
Because he wanted to be remembered.
The blacksmith's son was not meant for greatness. He was meant to inherit soot and sore hands. To marry some quiet girl from the village. To die where he was born.
Enlisting had felt like escape.
He remembered the day he left — his mother holding his face too tightly, as if memorizing it. His father saying little, only pressing a calloused hand to his shoulder.
"Serve with honor," the old man had said. "And come back whole."
Whole.
Arlen almost laughed at the memory.
Training had been easier than this. Training had rules. Lines. Clear enemies painted in bright colors during drills. The instructors had barked the same lessons until they sank into bone:
Demons are cruel.Demons do not feel mercy.Demons wear the shape of men, but they are not men.
He had accepted it without question.
It was simpler that way.
Belief gave shape to fear. It made the unknown manageable.
Now, crouched behind broken stone with ash drifting through the air like gray snow, he tried to summon that certainty.
Movement flickered through the smoke.
Arlen reacted before thinking. He stepped out from cover and thrust his spear toward the shadow, shouting to drown out the fear in his chest.
The figure turned.
There was a sharp impact against his shoulder.
For a second, he felt nothing. Then the pain broke through — sudden and violent — as steel pierced through leather and into flesh. His grip failed. The spear slipped from his hands and struck the ground.
He stumbled back, breath shuddering. Something protruded from his shoulder — dark metal slick with blood. His blood.
He tried to pull away, but his arm refused to obey. His legs weakened beneath him, and he dropped to one knee in the dirt.
Through watering eyes, he forced himself to look up.
The demon stood only a few steps away.
It was taller than him, clad in dark, fitted armor that bore scratches from battle. Curved horns rose from its head, framing a face that was far more human than he had expected. No snarling maw. No twisted grin.
Just a face.
Its gaze stayed on him — steady, alert, almost assessing.
Arlen's thoughts struggled to keep pace with what he was seeing. This was not the mindless creature from sermons and training yards. It moved with discipline. With restraint.
The noise of battle faded to a dull roar in his ears.
He tried to stand again. His body wouldn't respond.
The demon stepped closer. Close enough that Arlen could see the rise and fall of its breathing beneath the armor.
His vision blurred at the edges. The sky above the courtyard swam in and out of focus.
The last thing he saw before the darkness took him was the demon reaching forward